Date               :       Saturday, 5 August 2023

Time               :       9.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m.

Venue           :       IEM (Southern Branch) Training Centre, 24B, Jalan Abiad, Taman Tebrau Jaya, 80400 Johor Bahru

Speaker        :      Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mohammadreza Vafaei, UTM

Synopsis

There are many structures and infrastructures worldwide that have passed their service life. These structures are subjected to aging and loads that are sometimes larger than their design loads. Therefore, as has been observed in many countries, they may face a sudden catastrophic failure. Conventionally, visual inspection together with non-destructive and destructive techniques have been used to assess the integrity of existing structures. However, these approaches have shown several shortcomings. For example, the outcome of a visual inspection is highly dependent on the experience of engineers and can be very time-consuming and costly for large structures like long-span bridges. Furthermore, damage may occur at any time and may not necessarily be seen during the periodic inspections. In recent decades, a new method which is referred to as the structural health monitoring (SHM) technique has emerged for the integrity assessment of structural systems. SHM systems employ different types of sensors to measure structural responses. These measured signals are then analysed to extract damage-sensitive features and report on the probable damage locations/ severity in real time. This presentation, at first, explains the differences between the conventional assessment of structural integrity and the SHM system. Then, the main components of a SHM system are described and their types and connections with other components are explained in detail. Next, different damage identification methods employed in SHM systems are presented and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Finally, some real-world examples of installed SHM systems on tall and important structures are presented.

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